This year, we went for something completely different for our Christmas tree- something that isn’t very traditional, but puts off the warm glow that I love the most about Christmas trees.

This is an original idea that came to me in a flash after seeing a photo of a large and beautiful chandelier hung close to the ground. I bought a bunch of paper lanterns (about $68) and three short strings of white lights with white wire (about $10). I explained my original idea to Brian, which was to pile all of the lanterns on top of each other from the bottom up, but he suggested we hang it all from the ceiling. I loved that idea even more!

Putting the whole thing together was pretty simple:

We originally planned on using fishing line to connect all of the lanterns, but those sure can get tangled up with each other (and the lights) rather quickly! We used the fishing line just to suspend the top lantern, and the rest of the lanterns are just connected with paper clips! That made putting it together go pretty fast, with the benefit of all of the lanterns having equal spacing. The cord for the lights go down to the floor, so I need to wrap some more presents to cover that up.

I can see this being used in the entry of a bigger home at the holidays, or even in a store-window display (maybe a visual merchandising career is in my future?).

I really had a lot of fun putting this together, a huge part of which was just going through the creative process. I think I’m not the only one that gets so caught up in the daily stuff that I forget how wonderful it feels to be creative and make something with my hands.